View the August 29, 2018 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today’s seminar. Today’s topic is Critical Urban and Critical Rural Freight Corridors Guidance and Designation Process Discussion.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. We will also take questions over the phone if time allows and I will provide instructions on how to do so once we get to that point.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today’s seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box.
PDH certificates are also available for Talking Freight seminars. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Today we'll have three presentations given by:
Our first presentation will be given by Chandra Bondzie, a Transportation Specialist for the USDOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operations. She works on the Research and Analysis team and supports the National Highway Freight Network and National Multimodal Freight Network development as well as freight fluidity and supply chain research initiatives. She previously worked as a Planner in the FHWA LA Division office and as a Freight Planner for the Houston-Galveston Area Council and the North Texas Central Council of Governments.
Chandra Bondzie
Good afternoon everyone, and apology. My computer decided to restart just before we began. So, Jennifer has pulled up the PDF that I am going to focus the discussion on. And when my computer comes up and I can share my screen, I will show folks how to easily locate this guidance. I have had a couple questions on how to find this particular guidance piece. But it is specific to the National Highway Freight Program, and it's in Q&A format about certifying Critical Rural Freight Corridors and Critical Urban Freight Corridors.
Before I get started, I want to let folks know that we have had approximately 23 states that have chosen to designate Critical Urban or Critical Rural Freight Corridors. There is no deadline for doing so, and there is no penalty if you don't have these corridors. They were intended as an added flexibility to add to the National Highway Freight Network. These portions from the 23 states were submitted on that willing basis, so they have come in at different times. There can be multiple submittals. We’ve had some states submit Critical Urban at one time or Critical Rural at another time. We’ve seen a variety of approaches to this as well.
Just to reiterate the National Highway Freight network consists of four components. The first and largest component is the Primary Highway Freight System (PHFS). That component is sort of a frozen piece, so to speak. That the PHFS does not come with a method for modification in the statute until re-designation, which happens in 2020. The Primary Highway Freight System total national mileage is about 41,000 miles, and it predominantly consists of interstate segments. The second category is all of those portions on the interstate that were not on the aforementioned Primary Highway Freight System. The reason that was added because the interstate grows and changes every year and sometimes by hundreds of miles or even thousands nationwide, and this is a way to incorporate flexibility, so all the interstates are covered in the overall National Highway Freight Network. The third category is the Critical Rural Freight Corridors, and the fourth is the Critical Urban Freight Corridors – and I will get right into those. Top of the guidance are the descriptions, but again, the intention was to add that flexibility using the state and local knowledge at the regional level to add pieces to the National Highway Freight Network. That reflects, or can reflect, that last mile freight segment.
So, in questions 1 and 2, it specifically talks about in the Q&A pulling directly from the statute how to define the Critical Rural and Critical Urban Freight Corridors. And I'm sure many of you are quite familiar with this – it is pulled directly from the statute – but for the Critical Rural Categories we have A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Those categories we see in the submissions that come in from states have been used multiples for each route. So, some folks may say it is a Rural Principal Arterial, which is A, but it also might be D as well, and so provides access to a grain elevator. And, very much, we also have seen a lot of use of the final category which is G, which is a category to help with flexibility. If it does not fit in the other categories but is determined to be very important to the state for freight, then you can use that final category of G.
Question 2 has a similar approach for the Critical Urban Freight Corridor, except it adds the caveat about designating Critical Urban Freight Corridors, which is that in an urbanized area with a population of 500,000 or more individuals, the MPO in consultation with the state may designate a Critical Urban Freight Corridor. And then in an urbanized area with the population of less than 500,000, the state in consultation with MPO may designate a Critical Urban Freight Corridor. You will see similar categories, although not as many, for the Critical Urban Freight Corridors. You have A, B, C, and D, but D is the same category. So, D is that specific route determined to be important with the movement of the freight within the region as determined by the EPO for the states. It adds an additional flexibility there for those categories. Again, you see for most of the submissions each route has multiple designations as the submitting entities so see fit.
One important thing to note about both of these Critical Urban and Critical Rural is that the statute simply requires that the state MPO designate a public road and meet the specific criteria for either one. That means that these roads must be open to the public, so not a private facility for a specific freight industry. But, also that it can be a road that falls below the functional classification that many folks would be used to. The Federal Aid System classification. Instead these roads can be local roads or rural minor roads.
Moving on then to question 4. Most of the states you will see a pairing of critical rural freight corridor cap of approximately 150 miles, Critical Urban Freight Corridor maximum mileage of proximally 75. In some instances, as explained in question 4, there may be some based on center line road mileage, more or less in those two categories. There is a link -- I think it came through in the PDF -- that you can click on that will take you to the table as well.
On the certification process for the Critical Rural Freight Corridors and Critical Urban designations, the Federal Highway State Administrator – we’ve gotten lots of questions. It's a little bit different than the State Freight Plan approval process, in that this approval process happens at the State Federal Highway Administrator level. The state puts together a submission package -- we will get to some samples later on in the questions. And then it goes to your Federal Highway State Office for acceptance. Then headquarters office -- we received the information and right now we're working on a national mapping effort to get all of the routes mapped. For those Federal Highway Division folks in the room, I may have touched base with you already. If you need more clarifying issue on validating mapping on all of the routes, but we will make that available hopefully in the coming months.
Question 7 talks about the category of submissions and the routes physically tables. Specifically, the routes should be described by name, to and from locations, and your length, followed by which ID that specifically is pertinent to that route. In some instances, states or MPO have also submitted GIS shapefiles, but those are not a requirement. For those states or MPO that were unable to or do not have GIS files to submit, we are mapping those from the routing tables that were submitted - so no worries there.
In question 9, it speaks more about the rolling basis, but you do not need to certify them all at one time. Again, some folks have submitted critical urban first or critical rural, or some have done just a few miles of each. We have seen a lot of flexibility among the states to meet their specific needs at this time.
I do want to touch on question 13 – and we are getting towards the meat. I think I brought it up on my computer. On question 13, “What is the National Multimodal Freight Network?” This is a very common question that we get. Right now, the National Multimodal Freight Network, after going through two rounds of comments posted on the Federal Register, is currently in development. The National Multimodal Freight Network is in a separate statute than the National Highway Freight Network, of which we are speaking now. The National Multimodal Freight Network can be found in 49 USC, and that particular network is intended to be used for planning purposes. It is not associated, currently, with a specific funding program. The National Highway Freight Network, of which we are discussing today, is on 23 USC and is connected directly to the National Highway Freight Program Fund.
And 14, “Can plant roadways and freight facilities be designated as part of the critical rural freight network?” Yes, they can. We see that as a very common practice from the submissions that we have received – that they are plant facilities. We ask that there is sufficient information submitted about links on the facilities there.
And question 15, “Can non-PHS interstate system routes be designated as a Critical Urban or Critical Rural Network?” Yes. For the law does not prohibit that designation. For some states this question is a bit of a moot point depending on how you fall into the criteria. You can spend money on all the four categories of the National Highway Freight Network. Those four categories are the Primary Highway Freight System, all other interstates not on the Primary Highway Freight System, Critical Urban and Critical Rural Freight Corridors. Those are fundable for many states on all four categories. And some states, called high mileage states, are limited to spending National Highway Freight Program Funds on only on 3 categories – the Primary Highway Freight and the Critical Urban and Critical Rural segments. In that case, they may wish to use their Critical Urban and Critical Rural flexibility to expand that, so more flexibility for those states who are high mileage states and unable to spend National Highway Program Funds on that second category.
We are coming to the end of the time that we have, and I just wanted you to see here in appendix A. I am going to bring this up fully, but in appendix A, this is the information from our state or MPO folks to head over to the Federal Highway Administrator once they have route and connectors they would like to submit. It shows roughly some language in a letterhead, and then down in figure 2 you will see the routes tables. So, the state, the route number, the start point and end point, and the ID that has been selected particularly for that route. Those are all of the components right now that we ask for submission. Again, GIS is not something that is a requirement. Although we know many folks have used that, we also know a lot of the states and MPO have used a wide variety of methods for establishing their critical urban and critical rural freight corridors. I am happy to say that that has been a positive aspect to the flexibility and designation process because many states struggle with very different issues and concerns. Some of the states have many over 500 K NPO's and some states may have none. We have seen across the spectrum – large states, medium and small states – able to use the designation process and designate these roads.
Jennifer, I am going to try to log back in quickly to the link that you sent earlier. I would like to show people where they can find some of this guidance. Sorry about that folks. We are going to hear from our later speakers after I'm, hopefully, able to open this up. Specifics about different processes in place at MPOs and also a state for designating these routes. I have not been able to see the screen thus far, but I did want to let folks know we are in the process of updating some of our guidance pieces based on some of the questions that we have gotten from our division folks in our state partners and MPO. I am going to share my screen.
Here is the guidance on my screen, and what I'm going to do is take you to where you can find it if you need to look at it again or look for other guidance. So, on the main “Office of Operations” page on the far right-hand side, there is a box called “FAST Act”. And if you click there you will see a great list of guidance pop up. Under “Freight Management and Operation”, here is the Critical Urban Freight Corridor and Critical Rural Freight Corridor guidance, as well as some additional guidance on other aspects. But if there's anything here under the FAST act, this is a great place for it. I can actually grab this link, Jennifer, and make it available to folks. There is quite a bit of guidance located in this particular section that you might want to take a look at. There are a lot of pieces that you can use, but you can click the information about the mileage under the National Highway Freight Network, which has its own page that speaks to each portion. And this will also be the site where in the final update to the National Highway Freight Network is complete – or at least that this update is complete and all of our critical urban and critical rural that have been submitted as of May 1, 2018 – those will get mapped. And then we will do another round and we can keep those on that rolling basis, and we will keep updating the maps that we can make available. Here is where, if you need to GIS information about the National Highway Freight Network, you can download to take a look at that data. That comes with a data dictionary that describes all of the attribute information. That is all that I have. I think we are going to hear from state and MPO about some of the processes for designation.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Chandra, and thank you to those of you who put those questions in. We will take those after all the presentations. Our next presentation will be given by Wenjuan Zhao, the Multimodal Freight Systems Planning Engineer for the Washington State Department of Transportation. She serves as the lead for freight data collection and analysis, and performant management of freight system. She also supports the multimodal planning efforts and programs in Washington State, including the development and implementation of Freight System Plan and State Rail Plan.
Wenjuan Zhao
Thank you. Good morning, and good afternoon to those on the East Coast. In today's presentation I will talk about the approach of Washington state to designate Critical Urban and Critical Rural Freight Corridors. And how we collaborated and coordinated with our regional partners and stakeholders. I will also talk about the technical work and data considerations behind the process. Before diving into the details, I want to give you some background information. In 2017, Washington State completed the federally compliant State Freight Plan.
The plan addressed several key items and elements for federal requirements, including issues, strategies, freight performance and physically constrained freight investment plan. What I want to highlight is that Critical Urban and Critical Rural designation is one critical component of our state freight plan. It enabled us to complete the National Highway Freight Network in Washington State. Using that network as a screening criteria to identify projects eligible for National Highway Freight Programs, and also informed development of the Freight Investment Plan. First, I will give you an overview of the FAST act requirement and the overall process we took. FAST Act specified each state in terms of corridor designation. In our state the mileage cap for Critical Urban Freight Corridors it is 81.6 miles and the cap for Critical Rural Freight Corridors it is about 163 miles. These are not a lot of miles available. One of the challenges we faced is that in our state we have a large truck freight network, which is more than 4,000 miles in total. This limited mileage means that only a small percentage of truck routes can be considered for this designation. In terms of the Urban Freight Corridor designation, only one MPO in our state, Puget Sound Regional Council met the 500,000-population cap. And PSRC is responsible for designating Critical Urban Freight Corridors in this region in consultation with WSDOT. In the other urbanized areas, they are all below the population threshold and WSDOT are responsible for designating the Urban Freight Corridors in consultation with all the other 10 MPO. For Critical Rural Corridors, WSDOT took the lead for designating these corridors and consulted with all the 14 regional transportation planning organizations in our state. Although this is not a requirement in the FAST act, we think it's very critical to engage regional partners through the process.
To overview the process, PSRC started the process in 2016 and we closely collaborated and coordinated with each other on the corridor designation and moving forward. Our timeline and schedules were aligned with each other with the goal to complete a process in September 2016. Washington also had regular check-ins with FHWA division to update on the progress we took and to get clarification on some technical questions we had. The process was completed in August and we submitted the final corridor to the division office for review and approval, and they forwarded that to headquarters for updating the National Highway Freight Network. I want to mention that Washington State is the first one in the nation which got the corridor designation certified by FHWA. To elaborate on the coordination process, which we took with our regional partners, Puget Sound Regional Council, both had separate roles in terms of designation to meet the 81.6 mileage cap. However, there's no guidance from FHWA on how to split up the mileage. Working closely with our partners we agreed to take a collaborative approach, which is a cooperative process to work closely with each other and not exceeding that mileage cap. We signed a memo of understanding in 2016 and agreed upon the criteria to move forward in the same timeline. In terms of the MPO consultation process, WSDOT formed the technical working group including a few members of MPO to work out technical aspects of the urban freight corridor designation. We included PSRC as active group members to be involved in the freight advisory committee. They used their own committee to seek input and feedback on the corridor designation and we were also closely involved in the process as a committee member. Two agencies started with the same set of criteria and this is consistent with FAST act requirements. We looked at public criteria including corridors with high truck volume and corridors with close connectivity to the Primary Highway Freight Network. The connection to the major freight intermodal facilities, such as major cargo airports, major Marine force and intermodal terminals, and also large industrial warehousing centers.
To apply those criteria, look at data sources available for the truck volume/tonnage we used an established State Truck Freight Network with associated truck volume data to screen out critical corridors with high-volume, or moving heavy truck throughout the state. To look at the conductivity to the major freight facilities we use different data sets. The PSRC screened based on the region designated manufacturing and industrial centers, including nine of those centers that are intensive freight activity locations. They use that to identify corridors serving those centers, as well as connections to regions – cargo ports like Seattle, Port of Tacoma, and SeaTac airport.
For WSDOT, since there is no such designation, we used a different data set. We looked at clusters of industrial centers, which is from a statewide parcel database. We screened out locations with intensive freight activities and also looked at locations with major freight intermodal activities and to select corridors serving those freight hubs. Lastly, is to consider the mileage cap So, both agencies screened based on locations with active freight projects, and this is to select segments within the candidate corridors that have active freight project to move forward, and also to cut down the mileage to getting closer to the mileage cap. This step we did by reaching out to our MPOs and having them review the candidate corridors and providing recommendations back to us about which locations are critical and should be considered for the corridor designation.
Here I want to give you an example of the critical urban corridor designation in Southwest Washington. This is a Vancouver urbanized area. This is on the Oregon state line, and in this map the blue lines are the Primary Highway Freight Networks, orange lines are the high-volume truck corridors, and red lines are highlighting the segments recommended by MPO for inclusion in the Critical Urban Freight Corridor designation. We went through a couple of iterations with our MPO to discuss and review candidate corridors and finally we narrowed it down those three locations. All of those are important to the state freight movement and they also have active freight projects meeting the need for freight investment.
In terms of Critical Rural Corridor designation, we started with the same set of criteria as specified in the FAST act, including high-volume truck corridors, meaning that 25% of truck volume in the corridors providing access to major agricultural facilities and industrial centers, and also scalable to meet the mileage cap. To apply those criteria, we looked at a variety of data sources available. We looked at truck volume data from the HPMS. And we also looked at facility location data gathered from other agencies such as department of agriculture for locations of grain elevators and agricultural facilities. And we use that data to perform technical analysis to identify candidate corridors serving those freight facilities. At the last screening, again, we look at how to narrow down the list of candidate corridors since it’s well beyond the mileage cap we have in our state. We worked together with our RTPO, asking him to review the locations of candidate corridors and narrow that down to segments with critical needs for improvement. And this helps us to meet the mileage cap.
Here I want to give you another example. This is the Critical Rural Freight Corridor in East Washington, Spokane Regional Transportation Council. The green line in this map is a Rural Corridor recommended by SRTC. It provides direct connection between two urban freight hubs, and it helps to divert truck traffic from congested urban streets. And also, those freight corridors have active freight projects – a couple of projects to improve future freight mobility – so this was included in the final list of the Rural Corridor designation.
In terms of overall outreach process to stakeholders. The Puget Sound Regional Council served as a lead for Urban Corridor designations within its urbanized boundaries. WSDOT served as a lead for Urban Corridor designation in other urbanized areas, and also the lead for Rural Corridor designation in non-urbanized areas. We worked closely with PSRC by consulting with each other and collaborating with each other, and we moved forward with the same set of criteria. And also, to ensure we can go through it multiple times, in terms of reviewing and revising the locations of candidate corridors to meet the mileage cap. And WSDOT also consulted with all MPOs and RTPOs through a coordinating committee. We had initial discussions with each of them to understand critical needs for freight investment, and also to have them review and verify the candidate corridor locations.
This shows the timeline for our designation. We started in February 2016 and completed in September 2016. We talked to the committees as we began to establish a working approach and a process halfway through to present and review the draft corridors selection, and in the end to present the final corrido selection for their confirmation. We also formed the technical working group, and this helped us to work out the technical aspects such as what criteria to use, what data sets are available to conduct those analyses, and review and revise the map multiple times throughout the process. The federal guidance came out in April 2016 after we started our process. The guidance validated our assumption and our approach for this work and we completed and submitted our corridor list to FHWA in August.
This map shows a complete National Highway Freight Network in Washington State. It’s not the contiguous network, due to the mileage, but it captures the critical locations serving major freight hubs and having needs for improvement. It also reached a good balance between different geographical areas.
To conclude my presentation, we have a couple of key takeaways from this process. First, a strong working relationship with MPOs and RTPOs is key to the success of the process. Having that memo of understanding signed at the beginning of the process was very important. It helped to reach a mutual agreement on the approach and establish timeline methodology early. Secondly, using established committees to coordinate and engage partners and stakeholders on a regular basis helped this process move smoothly. We used state freight advisory committees and MPO coordinating committees, and those groups meet regularly. And we do that to engage and involve them in the process. And third, due to the limitation of the mileage cap, this process is not going to result in a comprehensive or well-connected freight network. It is closely tied to funding eligibility. Communicating with our stakeholders and partners about the limitations of the process helped us to achieve early buy-in and develop realistic expectations. Fourthly, the corridor designation may be revisited and re-designated at a later date. We used up all our mileage in our process, and still there is some corridors are not captured in this process because it does not rise up to the priority level. Those priorities can be revisited and reconsidered in future updates.
Lastly, completing this designation enabled Washington State to use the network as a screening criteria to identify projects eligible for freight formula funds. And some of the projects on this Critical Urban and Rural Corridors are included in our State Freight Plan and Freight Investment Plan and have also received State Formula Funds to move forward. That concludes my presentation.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you Wenjuan. Our final presentation will be given by Jon Schermann, a Transportation Planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG). In his 14+ year career, Jon has worked in many areas of transportation planning, but his primary focus is on freight transportation and highway safety. At COG, Jon ensures that freight is considered within the transportation planning process through his support of COG’s Freight Subcommittee and involvement in the development of the National Capital Region Freight Plan and other freight-related projects and initiatives.
Jon Schermann
Thank you for the invitation to share our corridor MPO process for identifying the corridors within the Washington metropolitan region. I will start with a brief introduction to the Capital National Region Transportation Board – this is the MPO for the national Washington region – and I will highlight the major strategic and technical considerations associated with our Critical Urban Freight Corridor process. Most of what I say today relates to the methodologies used to identify our Critical Urban Freight Corridors, which leads then to their official designation. Finally, I will share the results and key takeaways of this effort.
This slide shows the geography of our MPO planning area. The TPB is a large MPO with more than 5 million people, 2 million households, and 3.1 million jobs. This includes all of Washington DC, four counties in Maryland, and Northern Virginia. This feature of our MPO, that is that it includes all of one state and portions of two others, impacts everything we do including designating Critical Urban Freight Corridors. The strategic issues that TPB considered at the beginning and throughout the process fall into two categories. Coordination & Involvement and Schedule & Timelines. TPB staff worked closely with our partners at each of the three state DOTs throughout the process. Internally, we also engaged both the technical committee and the freight subcommittee throughout the process. Their input on the methodology used and feedback on the resulting Critical Urban Freight Corridor segments was critically important to the success of this effort. To meet the December 4th target date, the TPB needed to designate the Critical Urban Freight Corridors during their November meeting. To allow sufficient time for board member to review this meant that we needed to present this at their October meeting. And since Critical Urban Freight Corridors were a new concept, we requested time on the September meeting of the TPB to explain what Critical Urban Freight Corridors are, inform the board members of their new authority to designate them, and describe why they are important. One complicating factor arose out of the different timelines of our member states. Maryland requested their Critical Urban Freight Corridors be designated by June 2017, well ahead of both the Virginia and District of Columbia timelines. To address this issue, the TPB steering committee, which is basically an executive committee of the TPB, passed a resolution providing provisional designation of the Maryland Critical Urban Freight Corridors pending the official destination by the entire TPB later in the year.
The primary technical consideration was the desire for a defensible process that uses readily available data. We also wanted to have as consistent of an approach as possible for each state’s portion of the region, while also addressing each state’s unique situation. It looks like some of the text is not coming through on the charts, so I will go over that. Maryland was the first of our states to begin working on identifying Critical Urban Freight Corridors and had partnered with Cambridge Systematics to assist in their efforts. The Cambridge Systematics team, along with the Maryland Department of Transportation people, did some really good work to develop a Freight Density Score for each roadway link in the state. Density was based on the proximity of the given roadway link to freight intensive industry employment. The Maryland State Highway Administration included us, as well as staff from the other MPO's in the state, in regular meetings to share information on this process as it developed. The good news for us was that Maryland provided a geodatabase that included the freight density score, as well as truck volumes, for each roadway link in the state.
This information, the truck volumes and freight density score for each link, provided the foundation of our process. Because we are in the Critical Urban Freight Corridor business, we limited our analysis to just the roadway links in the urbanized area of suburban Maryland. Basically, we have now the geodatabase that includes truck volumes and freight density scores for each relevant roadway link. We then normalized the truck volumes and freight density scores on a 1 to 10 scale and combined them into a single score for each urbanized roadway segment. Then the roadway links were sorted in descending order by overall score.
At this point TPB staff conducted an iterative process using this information to identify the top 50 miles of Critical Urban Freight Corridor candidates. These 50 miles of corridors were then cross-referenced to the location of planned Maryland Department of Transportation Investments to identify our staff-proposed list of Critical Urban Freight Corridors segments totaling 25 miles.
This map shows the results of the process. The highways in green are the National Highway Freight Network established in the FAST act. The roadways in red are the roughly 25 miles of corridor segments identified through the process I just described. I will note that the U.S. 50 link from the DC/Maryland line east towards the I-95/I-495 Beltway is a very important freight route into the District of Columbia. I will also note that the Critical Freight Corridor segments that came out of this analysis were not surprising to us, as we had previously developed a Regional Freight Significant Network that all of these corridors turned out to be on. It felt like it validated our process.
We felt that the process used for the Maryland portion of the region was a good one and wanted to use a similar approach for the Northern Virginia part of our region. You can see here that the process we came up with is very similar, yet not identical, to the one we developed for Maryland. The differences are shown in blue. For Virginia, we did not have a ready-made geodatabase with Freight Density Scores by link. Also, there are no Freight Intermodal Facilities in the Maryland portion of our region, but there are four in northern Virginia – two pipeline terminals, a rail/truck intermodal facility, and Dulles Airport. We needed a way to incorporate them into the process as well. So, we modified the Maryland process by coming up with another way to get a Freight Density Score and we added an Intermodal Connector Score.
I will discuss these two new scores on the next slide but before I do, I want to point out that the rest of the process is the same. We normalized each score – that is truck volume, freight density and intermodal connector - combined them into an overall score, sorted each link in descending order by overall score, used an iterative process to identify the top 50 miles of Critical Urban Freight Corridor candidates, and then cross-referenced that list with planned VDOT investments to identify the staff-proposed list of Critical Urban Freight Corridor segments totaling 17.8 miles.
We wanted to have a freight density score for the northern Virginia process, but we did not have the time or resources to mimic the method Cambridge Systematics developed for Maryland. However, the department of planning has acquired and routinely uses CoStar data. CoStar is a company that, among other things, sells a comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. On this chart, the bottom thing on the left, which does not come through, is Intermodal Connector Scores is what that says. So, CoStar, as I mentioned, is a company that sells a comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. And we used some of the information in the CoStar database – basically the location and rentable building area of freight intensive buildings (that is industrial, warehouse distribution, retail, hospital and a few other types) – to create our own freight density score for each urban roadway segment in Northern Virginia. The way we did this was to sum the Rentable Building Area of freight intensive buildings within ¾ of a mile of every urban roadway segment. This figure became our freight density score. We also identified roadways that provide access to the four freight intermodal facilities in Northern Virginia and assigned an intermodal connector score to those segments.
This is a manual process and was easy because we already knew where the intermodal connectors are. So, if a roadway segment is one of these intermodal connectors, it is scored a 10 in the category and if it is not it scored a zero. Then we are in the process for intermodal corridors and we scored the top of 17.8 miles. This map shows the results of the process. The highways in green are the National Highway Freight Network established within the FAST Act, and the roadways in red are the 17.8 miles of Critical Urban Freight Corridor segments identified through the process I just described. I'd like to point out that one of the segments is Interstate 395 which goes from I-95 into the District. That goes back to what Chandra was saying, back to question 16, because Virginia is a high mileage state. Not all of the interstates are automatically in the National Highway Freight Network, so we were able to use this designation process to designate that important interstate.
Because the District of Columbia lies entirely within the TPB planning area, the District Department of Transportation took the lead in identifying their 75 miles of Critical Urban Freight Corridors. They worked closely with our MPO staff and made regular presentations on methodology and resulting corridors to our freight subcommittee and technical committee. I will highlight that DDOT leveraged their 2010 Truck and Bus Route designations, combined with the known highway corridors and freight generators and commercial districts. And they also considered project locations, roadway classification, and truck access. The green routes shown here are the resulting Critical Urban Freight Corridors in the District.
I did miss a slide – I think I will touch on it very quickly. This one here. This shows how many miles each state was provided for Critical Urban Freight Corridors. So, Maryland had 75 miles, the District of Columbia also had 75 miles, and Virginia had 83.35 miles to designate. Interestingly this allocation of Critical Freight Corridor miles resulted in the situation where the District of Columbia, which is geographically quite small, is allocated the same number of Critical Urban Freight Corridor miles as the entire state of Maryland, and slightly less miles than the even larger Commonwealth of Virginia.
To go back to results and takeaways, TPB did adopt a resolution designating the staff-recommended segments on November 15, 2017. And the keys to the success of this project was the collaboration between our state DOT partners and MPO staff. It was important to take the time needed to engage internal committees over the course of many meetings. This allowed them to understand what Critical Urban Freight Corridors were and also what they were not. Some of the concerns and the questions raised during the process, mostly by the internal committees, were about the lack of connectivity among the Critical Urban Freight Corridor segments. And mirroring what Washington State mentioned, the basic approach to explaining this was to encourage committee members to think of this as a funding network and highlight that the segments can be re-designated as needed. The Board itself was interested in the funding levels associated with the Critical Urban Freight Corridors. Also, it took some time to clarify, because there was a lot of confusion related to the different freight networks. We had created our own MPO freight significant network a couple of years prior to this effort so there was quite a bit of time taken in trying to explain how this network was different from all the other freight related networks.
I think finally we did have a few of the questions along the lines of “Hey, this road in my jurisdiction is very important. Why is it not included as a Critical Urban Freight Corridor?” Some questions like that. And I think having a defensible process for identifying the proposed segments helped the staff very much in dealing with these questions. Because we were able to show how their particular roadway of interest fared in the scoring, and why, even though it is very important to the region, because there are so few miles available that the particular roadway did not rise high enough to outscore other very important roadways. So, with that I will conclude my presentation and I will be happy to take questions.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Jon. We will start the Q&A session with the questions that have been posted online. And if we get through the questions and still have time, I can open up the phone lines. Jon, I will start off with a question for you. What was the iterative process used to identify the top 25 or 50 miles of 'candidate' links?
When we went through this technical process of coming up with this sorted list of roadway segments by overall score, what happened with that is that we often end up with a lot of very small segments that could be scattered all over. And it's something that we could not just hit a button and say, “these are going to be the important 50 miles”. So, the iterative process was looking at this as a tool and saying, “here are some very high-scoring segments – they're kind of close together and they make a reasonable roadway link between two other roads.” So, combining those together and saying these four segments that scored highly are going to be the Critical Freight Corridor candidate #1, for example, and then I would take those out of the list and look at all the remaining ones that want go through the same process and try to combine various small segments into more meaningful larger segments that made sense. So that process was something that was staff-generated and used the information generated by the technical process to come up with something that looked reasonable. And that was basically the process.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question for you. How do you calculate freight density?
Jon Schermann
It was different for Maryland and Virginia. So, for Maryland – the state of Maryland engaged a consultant to help them with the Critical Urban Freight Corridor effort throughout the whole state. So, the consultant had done a lot of analysis of freight employment – so looking at the employment, breaking it down by zip code, and relating those with locations and roadway segments to come up with a Freight Density Score. And we did not touch that process, we used the results of that process directly in the case of Maryland. And for Virginia, we did not have that ready-made score that a consultant had already put together, so we had truck volumes, but we did not have the other part of the Freight Density Score. So that's where we used CoStar data, which is a commercial real estate database that has all kinds of information about every commercial property building in the region. So, we were able to go in there, and one of the categories is building type. We know if it's a warehouse building or industrial land or shopping mall or hospital, condominium, apartment buildings and things like that. So, with all those building types we made a decision that we are only going to look at industrial buildings, warehouse distribution facilities, hospitals and certain retail as being freight intensive building types. We also had in the CoStar data a number of square feet of space in these buildings. So, for every roadway segment we took a three-quarter mile buffer around it and summed all of the freight intensive rentable building areas that were in that. So, we got a score for every roadway segment, and that of course was normalized to a score between 1 and 10 so it could be adequately combined with the other scores, which were also normalized. That was it. If you wonder how we did the proportion in Maryland since we only had the two elements, truck volume and freight density, we did two-thirds weigh on the truck volume and one-third of the freight density, which again, in Maryland’s case, was the Combined Consultant Derived Number. And in Virginia, we had a truck volume, freight density, and intermodal connector score, so there we did 50% truck volume and 25% each, freight density and intermodal connector.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Why wouldn't you use the total allowable mileage of 25 miles for Virginia? Does this mean you were doing a better job identifying freight corridors in VA over MD?
Jon Schermann
The issue was that Maryland had 75 miles allocated to them for Critical Urban Freight Corridors and Virginia had 83.35, or something like that. However, Virginia is a much larger state and they have three large urban MPO's, like us. So, there were actually fewer miles to go around for Virginia. Our portion, the Virginia portion in our region, was only allocated the 17.8 miles and that was something we got from the state of Virginia. It was not something we determined within our MPO. That's why there is a different number of miles. And you might note that DC has all 75 miles, so they have a big number of miles that they can designate.
Jennifer Symoun
Wenjuan, there's a question for you. I know you typed a response in the chat pod, but I will give you a chance to expand. Per this goal listed in the FHWA guidance: “to reduce the environmental impacts of freight movement on the NHFN”—the WSDOT Freight Plan has a very good chapter on Environment. Will WSDOT seek FHWA funding to help site alt fueling facilities for trucks, or truck electrified parking at rest areas?
Wenjuan Zhao
For environmental impact of freight movement – we look at environmental impact as one criteria to evaluate the benefits of freight projects, and also use that for the process in terms of freight funding allocation. For the Freight Investment Plan, we have not identified a project specifically addressing truck electrification station issues. Truck parking is a topic we still need to further study. We did a parking study two years ago to understand the problem and the need in the state, but we have not come to the level of development. So, there's still a lot of work to do to get to that point.
Jennifer Symoun
And a question for both Jon and Wenjuan: Have either of your agencies utilized these designations yet? And if so, how has this changed how you allocate or focus freight funding?
Wenjuan Zhao
I will try to answer that question from the WSDOT standpoint. Yes, we adopted that designation of this as one of the screening criteria to be used to screen and identify projects located on the National Highway Freight Network and eligible for that freight fund. We had a lot of projects on the Critical Urban Freight Corridor, and we also did our prioritization process looking at the benefits of projects to the state, regional, and local freight system. This is concerning all six goals in our state. Some of the projects on the Critical Urban Corridor, which got prioritized through the process, already received funds in our state.
Jon Schermann
For us, I think I will have to say that it would be the state DOTs that are really allocating those monies to the project. And, as I mentioned, we did select corridor segments that did have capital improvements on them. I cannot say exactly which portions have received funding, but I do know that the state has the flexibility to use those freight funds on those projects in the Critical Urban Freight Corridor. That's all I can say about that, I guess.
Jennifer Symoun
I will go back up to the top now for some questions for Chandra. How many miles of the "portions of the interstate system not designated as part of the PHFS” do we have currently?
Chandra Bondzie
It is a rough number, because it increases every day, but I did want to give folks – I cannot share my screen, but there is a link, and I will copy that and send it to Jennifer. Or I will post it in the chat pod. That link, if you click on it, will bring up a nice chart by state that has the mileage which is that unchanging peace and non-PHSF interstate. We are still the process of updating this as we do the mapping on the Critical Urban and Critical rural. Non-PHSF interstate rose every time any given state designates interstate. We will do an update within the next few months, and we will do another big update in about six months as well to account for the nature and the flexibility in the Critical Urban and Critical Rural Freight Corridors and interstate, if you want to look at what we have at that point. I think that question was from Bernadette. Apologies if that's not correct. We have in Kentucky non-PHSF interstate at 160.17 miles.
Jennifer Symoun
There are a few questions about Rural and Urban Corridors, and discussion about it being over 2%. I don't know if you want to provide some clarification.
Chandra Bondzie
There is some information on the table that I sent, but it highlights all of the states with Primary Highway Freight System mileage that is greater than or equal to 2% of the total mileage in that state. Those are high mileage states. That's where the 2% comes in. Those are states that have PHFS mileage greater than or equal to 2% of the total PHFS mileage in all states. That is important, but I think everyone discussed that already. But those highlighted states, those high mileage states, they may not obligate all their NHFP funds on all portions of the NHFN, but only three portions – the PHFS, Critical Urban and Critical Rural. Everyone else that is not highlighted, they can spend NHFP funds on all segments of the NHFN.
Jennifer Symoun
How often will the maps be updated, given that the CUCR routes can change frequently?
Chandra Bondzie
I think we will probably do an update up to May 1, 2018, everything that was submitted then. Update all the tables we have, and we are doing an update on the guidance as well. We are hoping to get an interactive map up and going so folks can zoom in and zoom out, and we will have a tool where you can zoom in and see those segments. And we are hoping that will be complete over the next few months, but it will probably be another six months post-May 1. And we will do another big update where we will update the tables as well and the files behind what's displayed in the map. One of the advantages to having a tool like that is that we can keep track of Critical Urban and Critical Rural Corridors that were submitted for designation over time. So, we will have a category that shows information about the segments if you click on the link. So, you will be able to see a timeline of when those routes were designated knowing that these were submitted on a rolling basis.
Jennifer Symoun
Do CUFC and CRFC corridors have to connect to the Interstate system?
Chandra Bondzie
No, they do not. On the guidance that we have with the Q&A in the PDF, questions 1 & 2, sort of detailed out the requirements for the designation and those categories A through G for Critical Rural, and A through D for Critical Urban are separated by “or” statements, so they have to meet at least one of those criteria. And for flexibility, as we mentioned, the final criteria in the Critical Rural category, item G, is that it be determined by the state to be vital to improving the efficient movement of freight. And a similar category for Critical Urban Freight Corridors is category D, which is also important for the movement. So, that becomes a category where they can have that flexibility to designate an important corridor that will not necessarily connect to an interstate facility.
Jennifer Symoun
What is the guidance for updating or changing the CUFC after they are designated?
Chandra Bondzie
We are working on a specific process, and we will have guidance on the designation because it is a rolling basis. But for those of you who want to designate some at one time and some at another time and maybe some more at another time, there is no limitation there. So that means that some states will find it benefits them to designate biannually, or maybe once per year, depending on the process that they have selected for coordination and designation.
In question 9 in the PDF – question 9 is, “Do all CRFC and CUFC need to be designated and certified at one time?”, and the answer is no. And provides a little more about that. States and MPO's have the flexibility to designate it at any time or can designate one portion. If they went through the process and have found that they want to identify two miles and they want to designate that, and then maybe do another two miles in another month, that’s also a process that they can undertake with the notation that all the designation processes must follow designation as laid out in the Q&A's, which is the coordination. And I think, as we heard both from Washington and from the DC presentation, it can be a very competent process accomplishing the coordination, and a lengthy one. So, to think of a process that happened every week or every month or even every six months, may be too soon to fit with what most states have decided on as a coordination pattern. But we do leave it up to the states and MPO's.
Jennifer Symoun
The next question for you, and this is bigger picture thinking. At some point does all of this aim to replace the "National Network" from the 1982 surface transportation act? There is some confusion as to whether any of these new efforts will supersede this older law.”
Chandra Bondzie
I cannot really speak to that – I don't think so. The national network remains, and it serves a different purpose than the National Highway Freight Network. The national network, or I'm assuming you mean the National Truck Network, serves a very different purpose, and its legislation has not been sensitive. So, it remains a current and ongoing use network, as well as having the National Highway Freight Network, which has a little bit different component. But the National Truck Network is authorized. It looks like it's specific to high-volume routes utilized extensively by large vehicles for interstate commerce. It's a little bit different, and I think the National Highway Freight Network was that connection to the National Highway Freight Program Fund, so it has a little bit different purpose. I cannot speak to future legislation or decisions that may happen with regards to the network, but certainly we've had quite a bit of feedback from folks about the complexity of the number of networks and the similarity of the acronyms – we definitely heard that feedback.
Jennifer Symoun
When will the 2017 recognition for designations be finalized?
Chandra Bondzie
I'm not really sure what the 2017 recommendation for designations are. Is that specific to “Has the state submitted a designation for updating our guidance?”
Jennifer Symoun
Laura, if you want to clarify, we can try to address that. Another question is, “When will the notice of funding opportunity for the INFRA FY19 program be issued?”
Chandra Bondzie
I think the program manager can give us an update, but I don't have an update of that right now. But certainly, if we can get the contact information, we will follow up on that.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question here, all three of you feel free to jump in. Has any agency planned to sequence corridor designation changes to match completed projects in the future and stay within mileage limits?
Wenjuan Zhao
I will speak to that one first. We have used up all the mileage for the Urban and Rural Corridors, and we also have allocated five years of freight formula fund to projects from fiscal 2016 to 2020. So, beyond 2020, there is no funding available. We don't see a need right now to update the corridor designation.
Jon Schermann
This is Jon. I would say we have not thought about it yet, and for the similar reason that I think projects are programmed for several years yet, so this will not be happening soon.
Jennifer Symoun
Chandra, anything to add?
Chandra Bondzie
No.
Jennifer Symoun
Chandra, another question for you. What is the general average turn-around time for designation, from State or MPO request to final approval? And have there been any denials of requests? If so, can you summarize on this?
Chandra Bondzie
I don’t think so. Each individual state works with their DOT partners and MPO partners, and they work through any issues that might arise. But, I have not heard of any inability to work through any issues or have any certifications. And the timeline is up to the submission process, so, the states can begin their selection and take as long as they need to complete that and submit it over to the Federal Highway Administration office for review, which typically takes maybe one week, not much longer. But after that, they have 10 days to send it to headquarters after acceptance. We have seen some iterations going back and forth, where there might be some questions from the division back to the MPOs or the states. I think one time we received a rap table that was not easy to decipher. Simple things like that – just correcting anything that may have been left out. So, I have not really heard of anything, and we are approaching somewhere around 23 states that have had some portion of designation. But again, not all the mileage for each of the 23 states have been designated. Again, the states have been taking the approach to designate as they need. But I have not heard anything, issues or concerns, beyond that.
Jennifer Symoun
A follow-up on future designation. Does funding programming take into account prioritization of selection?
Chandra Bondzie
I think Jon and Wenjuan may be able to speak to whether that had an impact on how they prioritize the selection of routes. But under the guidance, there is no specific information about what the process might be or how to prioritize selection of route but maybe the others have some information about that.
Wenjuan Zhao
I think the question is asking if the funding program of the freight states are considering any prioritization of the corridor segments. If I understand that correctly, we only use the network as a screening criteria. We do not give extra weight if the project is on the Urban Freight Corridor or Rural Freight Corridor. We can see them passing that screening process and take that project to the next step to look at if this is providing benefits to the State Freight System. We do not prioritize projects based on its location in the National Highway Freight Network.
Jon Schermann
And then taking the same question, for us it's the same thing. It's either in or out. There is no proportional scoring for having a higher score or a lower score in the process.
Jennifer Symoun
We have about three minutes left. I have gone through all the questions and we will give an opportunity to see if anybody wants to ask a question over the phone. If you want to ask a question over the phone, press*5 and I can unmute your phone line.
I don't think we have any questions over the phone. We will end for today. I want to thank everybody for attending today's seminar and thank you to all of our presenters as well. The recording will be available online within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website and I will send out an email once it is available. Registration is not yet available for the September webinar but once it is information will be sent through the Freight Planning List Serve. The Freight Planning List Serve is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I encourage you to join the List Serve if you have not already done so. With that we will end for today and thank you everybody and enjoy the rest of your day.
